One Year Old

Mar 14 2019

It’s been a year now since we’ve launched, so we wanted to give you some updates on how the first year has gone, what we’ve accomplished, what our goals are for the next year, and some resources that helped us:

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1. 100% Entrepreneurs

On a personal level, we’ve both left our corporate jobs, which has been a huge goal for both of us. For more than a decade now, both of us had been working for someone else, which was sometimes fun, sometimes not, but which had always left us unfulfilled. Leaving our day jobs wasn’t something we took lightly, and for a while, we worked hard on evenings and weekends, but when the time finally came to take the leap into full-time entrepreneurship, we found it both immensely satisfying and rewarding. Of course, it’s come with plenty of stress and sleepless nights, but we’ve always wanted to be in control of our own futures, and this puts us on the right path.

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2. Every little helps

When we launched Plantifull a year ago, we had no idea what the reception would be. Since then, we’ve built up a loyal fan-base and sold over 20,000 meals across the U.K. By replacing dairy in our meals, that equates to savings of roughly 3,000 kg of greenhouse gas emissions, which is roughly the equivalent of driving a regular petrol car 7,650 miles, or heating the average UK home for 475 days*. We’re really proud of our ourselves and our customers for having this amazing impact on our environment and our world.

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3. Meeting our customers

We pride ourselves on being nimble and responsive to your feedback, so we’ve conducted over 100 samplings in our retailers and handed out over 5,000 samples of our food to you guys, and as a result, we think our products have gotten better and better. We’ve also created new product lines, like our 5-a-day pots, and new categories, like our Vegan Jerkies, on the back of your feedback.

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4. Veg Power

Speaking of the 5-a-day pots, we’ve served about 25,000 servings of plants through these, which hopefully helps you guys to be healthier and happier. We believe that everyone should have access to good food, and we love making vegetables delicious and easy for our customers.

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5. New Product Development

Just recently, we launched 3 flavours of our Vegan Jerkies. Most vegan jerky is either just dehydrated fruit or packed with tons of artificial ingredients, so we wanted to make ours completely different. It’s meaty, delicious, and packed with protein, and made with real fruits and vegetables with no preservatives or additives. If you haven’t tried them yet, we’re really proud of them, and the feedback has been incredible (a retailer list is coming soon!)

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6. New friends and networks

We’ve met some incredible startup brands, and we’ve made friends with some amazing entrepreneurs who inspire and support us. We came from corporate and finance backgrounds that could often be cutthroat and competitive, and while we’d always heard about how supportive the plant-based and food communities were, we’d never believed it until we saw it for ourselves. It’s been very rewarding to get to know the other dedicated rockstars who are changing the food landscape as we know it.

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7. What's next?

In the next 12 months, our goal is to expand to more retailers across the country, and to be able to add more flavours to our range. We know how many of you love the Three-Bean Chilli and Shroomy Risotto, and we’re working on making them even better by adding jackfruit to the chilli and more veg to the risotto, so stay tuned! We’d love to bring those back soon. We also have a roster of 2 other flavours of the vegan jerkies, so we want to launch those next year as well.

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8. Personal Development

Lastly, as personal goals, we’re dedicated to progressing our own development as entrepreneurs and prioritising mental health daily. The ups and downs of working for ourselves are often exhilarating, but they can take their toll, and we’re both learning how to be better about destressing and managing those emotions. Feel free to let us know if you have any tips!

*BBC online food impact calculator

RESOURCES:

The Food Hub– an amazingly supportive network of people involved in UK Food & Drink who take the time to answer each other’s questions, recommend resources, and connect with each other

Young Foodies– a London-based community that often hosts round-tables, knowledge events, and Meet & Greets with a blog on popular topics for startups

Vevolution– a fixture in the vegan community, Damien and Judy are the go-to connections for vegan businesses. They host regular events that help entrepreneurs, including last year’s Plant Based Bootcamp and Pitch & Plant, of which we were lucky enough to be a part

If you have any thoughts or experiences on going plant-based and/or starting your own business, we’d love to hear from you! Please email us at hello@plantifullfood.com.